In law, a deposition is a witness' out-of-court testimony that is reduced to writing for later use in court or for discovery. During a deposition, a witness will typically be shown a number of documents, termed exhibits, and asked specific questions about these exhibits. Each of the exhibits will be marked, that is, given an identifier code number, the first time a document is introduced during the deposition. For example, an exhibit may be marked as “Plaintiff's Exhibit 4”.
If the number of witnesses being deposed in a litigation is small, the list of exhibits introduced by the parties in the litigation can sometimes be fairly short. In such circumstances, exhibit management can be relatively straightforward.
However, in complex litigations, or if there is a large number of witnesses being deposed, the list of exhibits can increase dramatically, and maintaining consecutive exhibit numbering can become challenging. If an attorney deposing a witness is unaware that a particular document was already marked as exhibit during an earlier deposition, for example, by a different attorney, the attorney will reintroduce the same document in a later deposition under a different exhibit number. This action can create confusion in that the same document will be assigned multiple exhibit numbers.
Multi-track depositions, in which multiple witnesses are concurrently deposed, commonly occur in particularly complex litigations. In a multi-track deposition, the same document can be marked during each deposition, thereby increasing the possibility for further contusion. In especially complex multiparty litigations, preparation of tables cross-referencing duplicative deposition exhibits can become necessary, and parties to the litigation will be frequently referring to these cross-referencing tables during subsequent document review and preparation of various pleadings to maintain correct exhibit numbers. Accordingly, there is a need for an exhibit management system which provides consistent control over exhibit numbering and provides remote access to exhibits at any time.
By way of example, ideally in litigation, a party's attorney would prefer to use one set of exhibit identifiers (such as “Plaintiff's Ex. _”) for each exhibit marked at the deposition, and then simply retain these exhibit number identifiers all the way through briefing and trial of the action. If the number of witnesses is small and the depositions are not multi-tracked (i.e., scheduled concurrently), a party can use a running consecutive designation like “Plaintiff Ex. _” fairly readily by keeping a running list of the exhibit numbers used and the identification of each document corresponding to an exhibit number.
However, where depositions are multi-tracked and multiple attorneys for the same party are taking such depositions, it becomes very difficult to manage the exhibit list. For example, if a plaintiff's attorney A deposes witness Jones at the same time as plaintiff's attorney B deposes Smith, it is very difficult for attorneys A and B to coordinate the numbering of exhibits as “Plaintiff Ex. _”. The problem is that attorney A has no way of knowing what the next exhibit number should be, because attorney B (or other colleagues in the case of several simultaneous depositions) is concurrently marking exhibits in his/her respective deposition.
Often, attorney A will simply mark the exhibits as “Jones Ex. _” and B will mark the exhibits as “Smith Ex. _”. This action results in different sets of exhibit identifiers and those identifiers are used in the transcripts of the depositions. Many times, also, the same exact document is marked with different identifiers (such as Jones Ex. 4 or Smith Ex. 8). The problem gets compounded when attorneys for the party continue to use the name of the witness in later depositions as a prefix to the exhibit identifier.
The problem surfaces later in the case during briefing and at trial. At that time, it is preferable to use a single exhibit identifier for each exhibit in the case so that the court (or jury) can more easily follow the exhibits. A party's attorney will therefore need to convert the exhibit identifiers into a single set of consecutive identifiers and create a cross-reference table of all documents marked during depositions, so that it can make appropriate correction in briefing and during trial.
Using the example above, if a party's brief cites to a portion of the Jones deposition referencing “Jones Ex. 4”, and a portion of the Smith deposition referring to the same document identified as “Smith Ex. 8”, the attorney will need to use the cross-reference table to re-identify the documents with one number, for example, “Plaintiff's Ex. 1”, and then identify in the brief that Jones Ex. 4 and Smith Ex. 8 correspond to Plaintiff's Ex. 1. This creates a tremendous amount of work that could be avoided if a single identifier exhibit list is used in the first instance.